U.K. taxpayers “had a right to be absolutely furious” with regulators over their supervision of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc before its near collapse in 2008, the Financial Services Authority’s chairman said today.

Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other "story" – the Middle East – I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis.

But I will not hold my fire. It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard "experts" who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.

Let's kick off with the "Arab Spring" – in itself a grotesque verbal distortion of the great Arab/Muslim awakening which is shaking the Middle East – and the trashy parallels with the social protests in Western capitals. We've been deluged with reports of how the poor or the disadvantaged in the West have "taken a leaf" out of the "Arab spring" book, how demonstrators in America, Canada, Britain, Spain and Greece have been "inspired" by the huge demonstrations that brought down the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and – up to a point – Libya. But this is nonsense.

The real comparison, needless to say, has been dodged by Western reporters, so keen to extol the anti-dictator rebellions of the Arabs, so anxious to ignore protests against "democratic" Western governments, so desperate to disparage these demonstrations, to suggest that they are merely picking up on the latest fad in the Arab world. The truth is somewhat different. What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries. The Mubaraks and the Ben Alis and the Gaddafis and the kings and emirs of the Gulf (and Jordan) and the Assads all believed that they had property rights to their entire nations. Egypt belonged to Mubarak Inc, Tunisia to Ben Ali Inc (and the Traboulsi family), Libya to Gaddafi Inc. And so on. The Arab martyrs against dictatorship died to prove that their countries belonged to their own people.

And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against "governments". What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people's power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of "experts" from America's top universities and "think tanks", who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.

The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people's wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.

I didn't need Charles Ferguson's Inside Job on BBC2 this week – though it helped – to teach me that the ratings agencies and the US banks are interchangeable, that their personnel move seamlessly between agency, bank and US government. The ratings lads (almost always lads, of course) who AAA-rated sub-prime loans and derivatives in America are now – via their poisonous influence on the markets – clawing down the people of Europe by threatening to lower or withdraw the very same ratings from European nations which they lavished upon criminals before the financial crash in the US. I believe that understatement tends to win arguments. But, forgive me, who are these creatures whose ratings agencies now put more fear into the French than Rommel did in 1940?

Why don't my journalist mates in Wall Street tell me? How come the BBC and CNN and – oh, dear, even al-Jazeera – treat these criminal communities as unquestionable institutions of power? Why no investigations – Inside Job started along the path – into these scandalous double-dealers? It reminds me so much of the equally craven way that so many American reporters cover the Middle East, eerily avoiding any direct criticism of Israel, abetted by an army of pro-Likud lobbyists to explain to viewers why American "peacemaking" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be trusted, why the good guys are "moderates", the bad guys "terrorists".

The Arabs have at least begun to shrug off this nonsense. But when the Wall Street protesters do the same, they become "anarchists", the social "terrorists" of American streets who dare to demand that the Bernankes and Geithners should face the same kind of trial as Hosni Mubarak. We in the West – our governments – have created our dictators. But, unlike the Arabs, we can't touch them.

The Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, solemnly informed his people this week that they were not responsible for the crisis in which they found themselves. They already knew that, of course. What he did not tell them was who was to blame. Isn't it time he and his fellow EU prime ministers did tell us? And our reporters, too?

Swiss bank chief Philipp Hildebrand quits
Philipp Hildebrand, the embattled head of the Swiss central bank, has resigned with immediate effect after admitting that he had no proof that his wife made controversial currency trades without his knowledge.
Mr Hildebrand last week rejected calls to step down, refuting claims by the Swiss magazine Weltwoche that he had personally authorised the currency deal, which made the Hildebrands a Sfr75,000 profit in just two months.
By Szu Ping Chan - 2:47PM GMT 09 Jan 2012 -
Speaking at a press conference in Bern, Mr Hildebrand said:

"In view of the continued public debate centred on these financial transactions and following detailed examination of all documentation and reflection since the news conference, I have come to the conclusion it is not possible to provide conclusive and final evidence that my wife did initiate the transaction without my knowledge.

"The fact is my word is my bond I had no knowledge of my wife's transaction on that day."

Mr Hildebrand added that that he hoped the move would "allow the SNB to retain its credibility, which is its greatest assset."

Kashya Hildebrand, a former hedge fund trader who now runs a Zurich art gallery, bought Sfr400,000 (£272,363) for $504,000 on August 15. The trades were made three weeks before the SNB set a minimum exchange rate of 1.20 Swiss francs per euro to stem massive inflows of money from the eurozone which was hurting the Swiss economy.

In a statement released on Monday, Mrs Hildebrand said that she had failed her husband "by not considering the perception of a 'conflict of interest' created by my purchase of dollars....

Bryan Gould is a former British Labour MP and vice-chancellor of the University of Waikato.
Bryan Gould: Blind faith in market robs nation of its full potential
By Bryan Gould - 5:30 AM Thursday Jan 12, 2012
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid= 10778102
Bryan Gould says that the unregulated market can become an instrument of oppression. Photo / Alan GibsonEven the wealthy end up worse off in an unequal and divided society
The unregulated market can become an instrument of oppression. It was salutary to read Martin Robinson's argument last week that growing inequality should be, if not actually celebrated, at least endorsed and justified. What was remarkable, though, was the paucity of the arguments he advanced to support his position.
It was noteworthy that he did not deny that the gap between rich and poor had widened substantially; nor did he contradict the OECD's recently published finding that inequality had grown faster here than in most other countries. And he did not explain why today's more unequal society is an improvement on the New Zealand which once enjoyed one of the highest living standards in the world and was at the same time one of the world's most egalitarian societies.
He seemed unconcerned by the increasingly strong evidence, stressed by the OECD, that widening inequality is the hallmark of societies and economies that are functioning poorly; indeed, he seemed completely unaware of the excellent research produced by the authors of The Spirit Level showing that countries where inequality is most marked, such as the United States and Britain, are also those which face the most intractable social and economic problems.
He took refuge instead in attacking positions that no one actually holds. To deplore widening inequality is not the same thing as insisting that everyone should be paid the same, nor does it mean rewarding the idle and feckless at the expense of those who work hard.
His main argument was that paying the All Blacks top salaries has made them the world-beating team they are. But All Black excellence depends on many factors, most of which have little to do with salaries; they were world leaders long before they turned professional and even today are often paid less than they would be if they went overseas.
And, sadly, however much our business leaders are paid our economic performance still falls short of All Black standards.
Whole societies are, in any case, much more complex undertakings than a sports team. The ground on which Robinson really seeks to stand has nothing to do with rugby. Rather, it is the belief that if the market sanctions very large salaries then those payments must be justified, since the market cannot be wrong.
It is precisely this touching faith in the infallibility of the market that has produced our current difficulties. It was the unregulated market that brought about the global financial crisis, that pays huge bonuses to failed bankers and that exposed thousands of investors to the loss of their savings through the failure of finance companies.
The view that challenging the market is somehow immoral has only recently gained credence. Even Adam Smith took an explicitly contrary view. What extreme free-market ideologues do not seem to grasp is that the unregulated market can become an instrument of oppression, since it is so easily manipulated by those who wield dominant power in the marketplace. And if the market cannot be challenged, then there is nothing to prevent that dominance from being repeatedly exploited to extend that advantage, to the disadvantage of everyone else.
All too often, the market's apparent recognition of merit simply reflects the dominant position of those who walk away with the spoils. The best-paid people set each other's salaries and they are adept at ensuring that, while the global economy demands that working people's wages are driven down to third-world levels, it requires that top people are paid the huge salaries that are now the norm in the international marketplace.
No one begrudges appropriate rewards for those whose efforts add to the general welfare. But many big earners do not create new wealth; they merely manipulate existing assets. Bankers, property speculators and even (dare one say) foreign exchange dealers cream their fortunes off the top of assets that others have created, thereby siphoning off wealth for themselves that might otherwise have been more fairly distributed.
Growing inequality of course means that the wealthy lead quite separate lives, buying themselves out of life as the rest of us live it. We gain little from them and they know even less of us. While few now give credence to the "trickle-down" theory, the flipside of the market as moral arbiter - invariably rewarding the deserving - is the belief that the poor have no one to blame but themselves.
Those who manipulate the market to their own advantage enjoy not only material rewards but a sense of moral superiority.
What the apologists for inequality do not grasp is that we are all, including the wealthy, made worse off, not only because we live in a more divided and less cohesive society, but also because - by diverting so much national wealth into so few pockets - we thereby undervalue and make poor use of the productive potential of the rest of us, so that we produce less as a country than we should.
Bryan Gould is a former British Labour MP and vice-chancellor of the University of Waikato.
By Bryan Gould_________________www.rethink911.orgwww.actorsandartistsfor911truth.orgwww.mediafor911truth.orgwww.pilotsfor911truth.orgwww.mp911truth.orgwww.ae911truth.orgwww.rl911truth.orgwww.stj911.orgwww.l911t.comwww.v911t.orgwww.thisweek.org.ukwww.abolishwar.org.ukwww.elementary.org.ukwww.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

Britain's two state-owned banks have hired seven separate lobbying and public affairs companies at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, The Independent has learnt.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is 83 per cent owned by taxpayers, paid six firms last year despite losing more than £750m in six months. It also employs its own team of internal corporate lobbyists to influence ministers.

Lloyds Banking Group, which is 41 per cent owned by the Government, retained two lobbying companies. It reported £3.3bn of pre-tax losses in the six months to June. Neither RBS nor Lloyds would specify exactly what the firms were doing on their behalf, but the extent of their use will fuel concerns that the banks are using taxpayers' money in an attempt to water down banking reforms and planned caps on executive pay.

It comes despite a ban by ministers on other recipients of taxpayers' money hiring public affairs firms to lobby other arms of Government.

The Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, has said:
"Taxpayer-funded campaigns conducted by private lobbying firms mean... public policy is weakened and public discourse becomes a soundbite battle. Lobbyists are not subject to Freedom of Information or transparency rules. Democracy is at its strongest when it is cost-efficient, open and transparent, and lobbying on public money undermines it." He has also said that taxpayers did not want public money spent on "loudhailer propaganda".

Last night, Downing Street sources said it "seemed ridiculous" for banks such as RBS and Lloyds to be spending shareholder money on PR consultants. They insisted, however, that doing so did not buy influence with ministers. "These firms might try and lobby us to do things but that does not mean that we do them," one No 10 source said.

Tamasin Cabe, of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, described the revelations as "offensive" while Labour said they were "outrageous".

"It is hard to explain how a state-owned company should need lobbyists to lobby the state," said Jon Trickett, the shadow Cabinet Office minister. "They should be spending their money providing better services for customers."

The records of banks' hirings are contained in client records kept by the public affairs industry.

$15 TRILLION is equivalent to the the federal debt of the U.S. Treasury Department. Lord James of Blackheath has spoken in the House of Lords holding evidence of three transactions of 5 Trillion each and a transaction of 750,000 metric tonnes of gold and has called for an investigation.

I think there are three possible conclusions that may come from it. I think there may have been a massive piece of money laundering committed by a major government which ought to know better and that it has effectively undermined the integrity of the British bank the Royal Bank of Scotland, in doing so. The second alternative is that a major American department has an agency that has gone rogue on it because it has been wound up and has created a structure out of which they are seeking to get at least 50 billion Euros as a payoff. And the third possibility is that this is an extraordinarily elaborate fraud which has not been carried out but which has been prepared in order to provide a threat to one government or more if they don't pay them off. So there are three possibilities and this all needs a very urgent review.

GODS OF MONEY F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL
F. William Engdahl exposes masterfully with ground breaking investigations how a tiny ultra wealthy oligarchy took control of the US and the world's financial system and shaped the fate of life and death on our planet. (C. Quigley: `a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the world economy in a feudalist fashion.')
The continuous greatest hold-up in the world
A. Lincoln said that `the privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but also its greatest creative opportunity.' But, with the Federal Reserve Act a tiny consortium of private bankers took total control of the US money printing press and US monetary policies, using the faith and credit of the US government to fill their own pockets.

The battle for world financial supremacy
This consortium (mainly the Houses of Morgan and Rockefeller) attacked the London-controlled Gold Standard and replaced it in 1925 by the US controlled Gold Exchange Standard (GES) with its gold-dollar link.
In the face of a market crash and a severe economic downturn the FR chose to defend the GES with a severe discount rate hike. A monumental depression made a `leftist' New Deal necessary.
With the bankruptcy of its main commercial rivals, the US forced the Bretton-Woods Agreements through at the end of WW II. It took control of the world economic space (raw materials and markets) and imposed worldwide its economic policies of free trade and open markets through the BIRD, the IMF and GATT. Moreover, the dollar (with a fixed gold price) became the world's only reserve currency giving the Fed uncontrolled power to issue virtually unlimited amounts of dollars.
The full speed dollar printing to finance the Vietnam War forced President Nixon to cut the gold-dollar link. But, the dollar was rescued by a monumental rise in the oil (quoted in dollars) price. Another rescue was nevertheless necessary as Fed chairman Paul Volcker blew the interest rates into the stratosphere. Today, the outlook for the dollar seems to be extremely bleak.

Battles in the US
With the Glass-Steagall Act (splitting the depository banks from the insurance and investment companies) enacted in 1933 after the Wall Street Crash the House of Morgan was beaten by its main rival the House of the Rockefellers.
A frontal attack against the FR was launched by President Kennedy when his government printed outside the FR interest free US Notes backed by silver. He died before the could be pyblicly distributed.
President Reagan attacked the New Deal and introduced financial deregulation opening a window for big financial mergers which became `too big to fail'. Under Fed chairman A. Greenspan the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed. It all ended in 2007 in a worldwide financial tsunami when the global financial system collapsed.

World political supremacy
Strategically, the long arm of the financial consortium was the `Council on Foreign Relations', which shaped (shapes) US international policies.
By financing the European rivals in the two World Wars, the US not only bankrupted its main economic rivals, but it could lay its hands on the strategic European heartland.
After WW II the US reigned superbly, military (A-Bomb) and economically.
It defended its position all over the Western world, also in France where a financial and political attack by General De Gaulle was successfully parried.
Today, one of the two pillars of US domination (the dollar) fell from its throne. Can the US continue to finance the other pillar, unchallenged global military strength, in the face of a prolonged economic downturn?

The Sunday Times Rich List, published today and compulsory reading for anybody who wants to understand Britain’s power structure today, holds three extremely significant conclusions. One is that the 1,000 richest persons in the UK have increased their wealth by so much in the last 3 years – £155bn – that they themselves alone could pay off the entire UK budget deficit and still leave themselves with £30bn to spare which should be enough to keep the wolf from the door. The second, even more staggering, is that whilst the rest of the country is being crippled by the biggest public expenditure and benefits squeeze for a century, these 1,000 persons, containing many of the bankers and hedge fund and private equity operators who caused the financial crash in the first place, have not been made subject to any tax payback whatever commensurate to their gains. This is truly a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

The third is that despite the biggest slump for nearly a century, the slowest and most anaemic recovery, and prolonged austerity stretching to a decade or more, this ultra-rich clique are now sitting on wealth even greater than what they had amassed at the height of the boom just before the crash. Their combined wealth is now estimated at more than £414bn, equivalent to more than a third of Britain’s entire GDP. They include 77 billionaires and 23 others whose wealth exceeds £750m.

Despite these massive repositories of wealth, these are some of the very people to whom Osborne gifted £3bn in his recent budget by cutting the 50p tax rate. That measure alone gave 40,000 UK millionaires an extra average £14,000 a week, at the same time as those on very low incomes in receipt of working tax credits who couldn’t find an employer to increase their hours of work from 16 to 24 a week were being deprived in the same budget of £77 a week, around a third of their income, through their tax credits being withdrawn.

In 1997 the wealth of the richest 1,000 amounted to £99bn. The increase in their wealth over the last 15 years has therefore been £315bn. If this increase in wealth were subject to capital gains tax at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, and that alone would pay off more than 70% of the total budget deficit. However Osborne seems to share the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonora Helmsley: “taxes are only for the little people”.

me in the comments section wrote:

Great to hear this very article plugged on natonal BBC radio this morning - MM for PM.
But weasel brain Nicky Campbell cut the caller off in mid-flow to go to, guess what, someone who wasn't there.
Classic BBC censorship and reminds me of the fact that BBC founder Lord Reith was a fascist, even a Nazi, a big supporter of Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia.
And Michael, you even appeared in the pre-Victor Rothschild coup BBC series: The Edge Of Darkness too.
You are the tops man.
God bless you and heal your every ailment!
BTW why was this article not in The Guardian. Have they been 'got at' too?

Banking should be run as a public utlity
Euro crisis and discussion about likely Greek departure from the Euro.
http://bcfm.org.uk/2012/05/25/17/friday-drivetime-72/17682http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/60275
Debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid. Insolvent banking sector needs to be wound up in an orderly fashion. Greens would focus on policies for schools, community centres and the NHS. Lessons to learn from Iceland which jailed bankers and politicians and Argentina which underwent total financial meltdown in 2000. Which? magazine survey finds all major supermarkets are using confidence tricks on customers with their fake ‘half price’, ‘buy one get one free’and other ’special offers’. But who can destroy the power of the supermarkets especially when they are colluding on deceptive pricing? City of London banking regulator Andrew Bailey signals the end of ‘free banking’ but, as we hear, account charges and banks’ ability to make up money out of nowhere and lend it at interest should mean free banking. Banking should be run as a public utility, a public service for all. Banking sector regulators Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Financial Services Authority (FSA) are more propaganda outfits than regulators as they are funded by the banks. Bankers are not like chrities, like an old fashioned feudal aristocracy. Credit unions are a viable alternative which keeps the wealth in the local community. The Bristol pound to be launched soon. Music: Editor of New York’s Trends Journal The Gerald Celente Mix by Robin Carvell. LibDem MP for Bristol West Stephen Williams asks awkward Prime Ministerial Question this week of David Cameron about policies for growth. Speaker asks Cameron to retract unparliamentary language calling Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls a ‘muttering idiot’ but Cameron dodges the speaker’s demand. We are now in a ‘double dip’ recession because you can not have growth and austerity at the same time. Bad language and behaviour at Prime Ministers’ Questions led, on this occasion by David Cameron himself. Gus wants to bring empty homes back into use and wonders why any offices are being built when so many around the city are empty._________________www.rethink911.orgwww.actorsandartistsfor911truth.orgwww.mediafor911truth.orgwww.pilotsfor911truth.orgwww.mp911truth.orgwww.ae911truth.orgwww.rl911truth.orgwww.stj911.orgwww.l911t.comwww.v911t.orgwww.thisweek.org.ukwww.abolishwar.org.ukwww.elementary.org.ukwww.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

In addition to this insightful note, Meacher is one of the few MPs who understand the dead end of the money creation system.
He has been in contact with the Positive Money crew. He truly is outstanding.

Mr Monckton on a few issues, Land & property, issuance of money, climate, agenda 21,

Gives a few solutions hitting on the big problems, but twists them at the end. Then at very end having told us about Marxism,communism (in the hands of the few) gives his? version of Marxism in the guise of free market (in the hands of the few.)

Last edited by Andrew. on Wed May 30, 2012 12:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

'We're being robbed!' 12yr old girl exposes Canada banking flaws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0IUl2UMwt4
Economists around the world are struggling to break free of the clutches of the financial crisis. But a twelve-year-old Canadian knows what needs to be done. Victoria Grant took the Internet by storm overnight, after a video of her slamming Canada's banks for robbing the people went viral. RT talks to internet sensation Victoria Grant and her mother Marcia Grant.
Published on 1 Jun 2012 by RussiaToday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx5Sc3vWefE
12-year old Victoria Grant explains why her homeland, Canada, and most of the world, is in debt. April 27, 2012 at the Public Banking in America Conference, Philadelphia, PA. Support a public bank for YOUR state. Donate and make it happen!

Germany must take control of the eurozone crisis - before it's too late

European authorities, with Germany at the centre, have a three-month window during which they can still correct their mistakes and reverse current trends

George Soros
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 June 2012 12.54 BS

It is now clear that the main cause of the euro crisis is the member states' surrender of their right to print money to the European Central Bank. They did not understand just what that surrender entailed - and neither did the European authorities.

When the euro was introduced, regulators allowed banks to buy unlimited amounts of government bonds without setting aside any equity capital, and the ECB discounted all eurozone government bonds on equal terms.
Commercial banks found it advantageous to accumulate weaker countries' bonds to earn a few extra basis points, which caused interest rates to converge across the eurozone.
Germany, struggling with the burdens of reunification, undertook structural reforms and became more competitive. Other countries enjoyed housing and consumption booms on the back of cheap credit, making them less competitive.

Then came the crash of 2008.

Governments had to bail out their banks. Some of them found themselves in the position of a developing country that had become heavily indebted in a currency that it did not control. Reflecting the divergence in economic performance, Europe became divided into creditor and debtor countries.

The eurozone is now replicating how the global financial system dealt with such crises in 1982 and again in 1997. In both cases, the international authorities inflicted hardship on the periphery in order to protect the centre; now Germany is unknowingly playing the same role.

The details differ, but the idea is the same: creditors are shifting the entire burden of adjustment onto debtors, while the "centre" avoids its own responsibility for the imbalances.

Interestingly, the terms "centre" and "periphery" have crept into usage almost unnoticed. Yet, in the euro crisis, the centre's responsibility is even greater than it was in 1982 or 1997: it designed a flawed currency system and failed to correct the defects. In the 1980s, Latin America suffered a lost decade; a similar fate now awaits Europe.

At the onset of the crisis, a breakup of the euro was inconceivable: the assets and liabilities denominated in a common currency were so intermingled that a breakup would have led to an uncontrollable meltdown.

But, as the crisis has progressed, the financial system has become increasingly reordered along national lines. This trend has gathered momentum in recent months. The ECB's long-term refinancing operation enabled Spanish and Italian banks to buy their own countries' bonds and earn a large spread. Simultaneously, banks gave preference to shedding assets outside their national borders, and risk managers try to match assets and liabilities at home, rather than within the eurozone as a whole.

If this continued for a few years, a euro breakup would become possible without a meltdown, but it would leave the creditor countries with large claims against debtor countries, which would be difficult to collect.

In addition to intergovernmental transfers and guarantees, the Bundesbank's claims against peripheral countries' central banks within the Target2 clearing system totaled €644bn (£522bn) on 30 April, and the amount is growing exponentially, owing to capital flight.

So the crisis keeps growing. Tensions in financial markets have hit new highs. Most telling is that Britain, which retained control of its currency, enjoys the lowest yields in its history, while the risk premium on Spanish bonds is at a new high.

The real economy of the eurozone is declining, while Germany is booming. This means that the divergence is widening. The political and social dynamics are also working toward disintegration. Public opinion, as expressed in recent election results, is increasingly opposed to austerity, and this trend is likely to continue until the policy is reversed. Something has to give.

In my judgment, the authorities have a three-month window during which they could still correct their mistakes and reverse current trends. That would require some extraordinary policy measures to return conditions closer to normal, and they must conform to existing treaties, which could then be revised in a calmer atmosphere to prevent recurrence of imbalances.

It is difficult, but not impossible, to identify some extraordinary measures that would meet these tough requirements. They would have to tackle the banking and the sovereign debt problems simultaneously, without neglecting to reduce divergences in competitiveness.

The eurozone needs a banking union: a European deposit-insurance scheme in order to stem capital flight, a European source for financing bank recapitalization, and eurozone-wide supervision and regulation. The heavily indebted countries need relief on their financing costs. There are various ways to provide it, but they all require Germany's active support.

That is where the blockage is. German authorities are working feverishly to come up with a set of proposals in time for the European Union summit at the end of June, but all signs suggest that they will offer only the minimum on which the various parties can agree - implying, once again, only temporary relief.

But we are at an inflection point. The Greek crisis is liable to come to a climax in the fall, even if the election produces a government that is willing to abide by Greece's current agreement with its creditors. By that time, the German economy will also be weakening, so that Chancellor Angela Merkel will find it even more difficult than today to persuade the German public to accept additional European responsibilities.

Barring an accident like the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, Germany is likely to do enough to hold the euro together, but the EU will become something very different from the open society that once fired people's imagination. The division between debtor and creditor countries will become permanent, with Germany dominating and the periphery becoming a depressed hinterland.

This will inevitably arouse suspicion about Germany's role in Europe - but any comparison with Germany's past is quite inappropriate. The current situation is due not to a deliberate plan, but to the lack of one. It is a tragedy of policy errors. Germany is a well-functioning democracy with an overwhelming majority for an open society. When the German people become aware of the consequences - one hopes not too late - they will want to correct the defects in the euro's design.

It is clear what is needed: a European fiscal authority that is able and willing to reduce the debt burden of the periphery, as well as a banking union. Debt relief could take various forms other than eurobonds, and would be conditional on debtors abiding by the fiscal compact. Withdrawing all or part of the relief in case of nonperformance would be a powerful protection against moral hazard. It is up to Germany to live up to the leadership responsibilities thrust upon it by its own success.

MEPs also raised concerns about the accountability of the raft of new financial instruments being formulated by the commission and other institutions in response to the financial crisis, particularly the new EU bail-out fund, the European Stability Mechanism, which comes into force in July.
The current fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, was set up on an inter-governmental basis domiciled in Luxembourg with no parliamentary oversight, and MEPs are keen to ensure that the ESM treaty includes provisions for external audits.

BRUSSELS - The EU should scrap the annual Declaration of Assurance (DAS) on the EU's accounts prepared by the Court of Auditors, (ECA) says its former president Jan Karlsson.

Karlsson was speaking on Wednesday (30 May) during a public hearing organised by the parliament's budgetary control committee, responsible for overseeing the work of the Luxembourg-based Court of Auditors.

President of the court between 1999 and 2001, Karlsson claimed that the exercise, which has seen the audits for the last 17 years fail to give the EU's accounts a clean bill of health, is "misunderstood" by the public who "perceived the exercise as an investigation into corruption in the European institutions."

Jules Muis, a former chief internal auditor of the European Commission, agreed the annual exercise should be scrapped in favour of an audit every five years.

"The time has come for parliament to initiate an EU inter-institutional debate to reconsider the rationale of the DAS and at least to take the annual mandatory DAS out of the ECA's mandates; possibly to replace it with a once every five years requirement," he told MEPs.

Muis added that the mandate of the court should be overhauled, calling for it to move from being "an almost exclusive auditing and accounting agency into a broader accountability agency" acting more as an independent accountability body.

The European Commission says that most irregularities in EU spending are committed at national level. Around 80 percent of EU budget spending is distributed by national governments.

Currently only four member states use a "national management declaration" which certifies that the accounts have been accurately verified, with governments blocking attempts to make it mandatory.

Earlier this month MEPs signed off the accounts of the European Commission and most EU agencies for 2010 although it refused to approve accounts prepared by the Council, the member states' secretariat.

MEPs also raised concerns about the accountability of the raft of new financial instruments being formulated by the commission and other institutions in response to the financial crisis, particularly the new EU bail-out fund, the European Stability Mechanism, which comes into force in July.

The current fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, was set up on an inter-governmental basis domiciled in Luxembourg with no parliamentary oversight, and MEPs are keen to ensure that the ESM treaty includes provisions for external audits.

Vitor Caldeira, Court of Auditors' chief, agreed that "adequate management reporting on risks and performance of such financial instruments will be key to maintaining transparency and accountability."

MEPs are also drawing up a report on the future role of the Court and its appointment procedures. Muis and Karlsson argue that ECA members should be selected on professional grounds, abolishing the one-country one-member requirement.

Luxury retail defies the slump by selling the things only money can buy
From historic hotels to private jet showrooms, the business of catering to the super-rich is still booming
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/24/luxury-retail-defies-sl ump-things-only-money-can-buy
Terry Macalister and Zoe Wood - The Observer, Sunday 24 June 2012
Want to fly a fighter jet at 500 miles an hour just above the ocean off Cape Town, drink champagne inside a glacier halfway up a Swiss mountain or host a five-a-side football game on the deck of a battleship – complete with England star – for your child's birthday?
The price may be prohibitive for most – £5,000, say, for the Top Gun experience alone – but business is booming for Red Carpet Enterprises, the London-based events company that aims to tickle the fancy of the most jaded super-rich.
Red Carpet is not alone in surfing the waves of cash that are still washing round those parts of the British capital that are relatively immune to double dip recessions, eurozone crises and cuts in public sector spending.
Italian luxury brand Bulgari has just opened in London what it claims is the first newly-built five-star hotel for 40 years, where for £700 per night you can apparently enjoy an "uncompromising sense of excellence".
Around the corner in the same part of Knightsbridge, The Jet Business has recently opened what it claims is the world's first executive plane salesroom, where you can choose your new aircraft inside a full-size, mocked up interior of an Airbus.
And all of this is a stone's throw from One Hyde Park, the "oligarch silo" where a penthouse suite can set you back £140m, but where you get SAS-trained security staff – as well as the ubiquitous gold taps – thrown in.
Last week the annual World Wealth Report produced by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management said that the global population of millionaires stood at 11 million – an elite club whose finances were riding out the financial storm, with their assets declining by less than 2% to $42 trillion (£27tn). If there was a surprise, it was only that the Asia Pacific super-rich outnumbered those in north America for the first time in 2011.
A recent luxury-goods market study by Boston Consulting Group predicted that spending on yachts, designer frocks and safaris would hit nearly £1bn this year. But the study identified a shift in spending patterns among the wealthy, who are increasingly keen to buy luxury "experiences" rather than add to their wardrobes and car collections. More than half of the £900m spent on luxury goods last year bought one-of-a-kind holiday packages or stays in exclusive resorts such as luxury goods group LVMH's hideaway in the Maldives.
"It's all about storytelling," says Robert Gaymer-Jones, chief executive of the Sofitel chain, which, following several years of investment by French owner Accor, has been recast as a luxury brand complete with Hermès toiletries in the en suites. He points to hotels such as the Sofitel Legend Old Cataract in the Nubian desert, where Agatha Christie wrote Death on the Nile. Visitors there, he says, feel like they are going back in time: "Our clients don't want an ordinary experience."
Making the dreams of the super-rich come true has proved to be a successful second career for Alan Rogers, a former general manager of Luton Airport, who now lives on a 17-acre estate in the Cotswolds complete with its own lake and manor house. The founder of Red Carpet says he has fewer corporate clients these days, as executives – particularly those at banks – are frightened of being accused of excess when many of their customers are struggling financially. But the market for the "high net-worth wealthy" is still the same, he reports, and he says he has never been asked for an exotic event or trip that he has been unable to fulfil.
"We organised for people to launch their own rocket at Kiruna in northern Sweden, and held a champagne reception on the helipad of the Peninsula Bangkok. If it's not physically impossible, or illegal, we can do it."
Steve Varsano, founder of The Jet Business, has the same message. He spent a fortune decking out his sales office off Hyde Park, but will fly anywhere at the drop of a hat to sell planes that cost anything from less than $18m to over $80m. "Business at the top end of the market is excellent, extremely strong," he reports, with Russian oil executives, Saudi princes and American technology entrepreneurs always game for a new "time machine".
Nothing is too much trouble: the Arab buyers may want seats that swivel to face Mecca, while the Chinese may want silk carpets and the Brits a replica of an old country pub. "Certainly what we are seeing is the buying of bigger and longer-range aircraft so that the guy in Mongolia can do his business with the oil guy in Nigeria," says Varsano.
The biggest growth in demand, perhaps unsurprisingly comes from China – up some 800% since 2003 – but there are still only 150 executive jets registered in China and 1,000 in the whole of Asia compared with 450 in England and 11,000 in America.
Jets are now advertised in numerous magazines for the super-rich such as the Robb Report and the new periodical Elephant Lifestyle – slogan: "Hit Big, Live Large" – which claims to be the "luxury living magazine for energy tycoons". It offers yachts, sports cars and even islands – all priced neatly in barrels of oil.
Private Islands, a luxury estate agent, says that business slowed dramatically during the recession but has picked up strongly over the last year. It is currently marketing the $18m "Cebaco private biosphere" off the coast of Panama, which boasts "palm-fringed coves with sandy beaches, cascading waterfalls and dramatic rock formations".
"We have seen an increase in inquiries from potential buyers as well as a healthy number of new islands coming on the market," says chief executive Chris Krolow, who adds that he has a number of islands in the $10m-plus range under contract. "The general feeling is that island prices have finally bottomed out and investors are feeling that this is a good time to buy. This is a very exciting time in the island world."_________________www.rethink911.orgwww.actorsandartistsfor911truth.orgwww.mediafor911truth.orgwww.pilotsfor911truth.orgwww.mp911truth.orgwww.ae911truth.orgwww.rl911truth.orgwww.stj911.orgwww.l911t.comwww.v911t.orgwww.thisweek.org.ukwww.abolishwar.org.ukwww.elementary.org.ukwww.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

“The members set about meeting people of influence here and there, casually, on a friendly basis. They planted suggestions for action to further the Zionist cause long before official government planners had come up with anything. For example, as early as November 1915, a leader of the Parushim went around suggesting that the British might gain Brandeis was a close personal friend of President Woodrow Wilson and used this position to advocate for the Zionist cause, at times serving as a conduit between British Zionists and the president.

In 1916 President Wilson named Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Although Brandeis officially resigned from all his private clubs and affiliations, including his leadership of Zionism, behind the scenes he continued this Zionist work, receiving daily reports in his Supreme Court chambers and issuing orders to his loyal lieutenants.[26]some benefit from a former declaration in support of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.”[25]

Vell now, vot a coincidence, already!
Powerful US Zionist Brandeis was a close personal friend of President Wilson; President Wilson sold the American people down the river with the Federal Reserve Act: could there be a connection?

When the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) was reorganized in 1918, Brandeis was listed as its “honorary president.” However, he was more than just “honorary.”

Powerful US Zionist Brandeis was a close personal friend of President Wilson; President Wilson sold the American people down the river with the Federal Reserve Act: could there be a connection?

Wild speculation - really poor post.

Wild speculation? Are you joking?
(By the way, whenever I hit a sensitive spot (like Zionism) I tend to get 'bloback' like nasty viruses etc.; though I generally get a load of (let's call it) Junk Mail, today I got 18, probably a personal record.
Needless to say, (or perhaps not to 'aficionados') they include a high percentage of financial and sexual cr*p.
I would like to reply to them to stick their cr*p up their jumpers, but on the other hand I'll pass, as even trying to reply would be counterproductive.
But 'acrobat74', 'Wild speculation'?
Hope you come back on this, because it's so damn obvious it ain't funny._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Senior Tories were dragged into the interest rate-fixing scandal last night as fresh evidence emerged that the banking industry denied there were any problems with "the integrity" of Libor five years ago.

The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Conservative deputy chairman, Michael Fallon, is a board member of a leading brokerage firm that dominates the rates market and which has been asked to co-operate with the Financial Services Authority's investigation into malpractice across the City.

Mr Fallon is a close ally of David Cameron and a senior member of the Treasury select committee that will question the Barclays chief executive, Bob Diamond, this week, prompting demands from Labour that he should declare an interest. The Prime Minister continues to resist calls from Ed Miliband for a Leveson-style inquiry into rate-fixing.

The Government is to set up an "urgent independent review" into Libor (the London inter-bank lending rate), but Labour continued to press for a judge-led inquiry. The review will consider the future operation of the Libor rate and the possibility of introducing criminal sanctions, a Treasury source said.

Class-action lawsuits are being filed in the US by plaintiffs that held financial products that depended on Libor. Any lawsuits that arise are likely to dwarf the fines that Barclays has already paid, perhaps running into the tens of billions across the industry.

The IoS can also reveal that the Bank of England was aware of concerns over Libor five years ago, and discussed it in at least two meetings with representatives of some of the City's biggest financial institutions.

Mr Fallon, the MP for Sevenoaks, has been a director of interdealer broker Tullett Prebon since 2006, standing down in 2010 when he ran unsuccessfully for chairman of the select committee, before being reappointed that year. Tullett Prebon is not under full investigation by the FSA into manipulation of Libor but has responded to "requests for information". A City source close to the investigation said it was "extremely unlikely Tullett Prebon would not be investigated" at some point, and sources at the firm, asked if employees could have engaged in wrongdoing, said they could "never say never". There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of Mr Fallon or the company.

In a statement the firm said: "Tullett Prebon, like probably all firms in the City, has been responding to requests for information from the regulators. To date, we have had no cause to suspend or otherwise discipline any employee in connection with this inquiry."

Labour said the Tory deputy chairman had "serious questions" to answer over his role at the firm, given his key role in Parliament's inquiry into the rate-fixing scandal, which is thought to extend far beyond the wrongdoing at Barclays.

Labour MP Simon Danczuk said: "Across the banks there are serious questions about who knew what and when and that must include the deputy chair of the Conservative Party. We have to get to the bottom of the Libor fixing scandal, and the Government must also agree to calls by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls for a proper independent inquiry into the culture of banking."

The questions over the role of Mr Fallon followed the revelation that one of the Prime Minister's closest advisers, the former Tory party treasurer Michael Spencer, is under scrutiny by the FSA. Mr Spencer's brokerage firm ICAP is one of a number of institutions alleged to have helped to manipulate bank interest rates while he was treasurer of the Conservatives. Mr Cameron said yesterday that he needed to "think this through carefully" whether there should be a judge-led inquiry into the Libor scandal. Mr Fallon and Mr Spencer are not the only Tories with close links to the City, prompting concerns that the party is not enforcing tough action against the banking industry. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, was paid by Barclays to sit on its Asia-Pacific advisory committee between 2005 and 2009. A spokesman for Mr Maude said last night the minister was "absolutely not" aware of any wrongdoing at Barclays and that the committee met "three times over a couple of years", was purely advisory and had no executive function. Mr Fallon declined to comment.

Court documents filed in the US accuse Bank of England officials of failing to act on questions about "the integrity of Libor" raised during meetings of the Money Markets Liaison Group as early as 2007. The meeting was chaired by the BoE deputy governor, Paul Tucker, and attended by officials from institutions including at least seven that have since been named in Libor investigations.

The British Bankers Association assured group members of its "quality control measures", and said that "they speak to contributing banks regularly". The decision not to investigate further effectively enabled British bankers to go unchecked for more than a year. The FSA finally joined the investigation into Libor manipulation in October 2009, after other countries had already launched their own inquiries.

A Bank spokesman said last night it was "nonsense" to suggest it had been aware of any Libor-fixing in 2007 or 2008.

The Conservative connection

Michael Fallon

Mr Fallon is deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. A close ally of David Cameron and a reliable defender of the Government on the airwaves, the 60-year-old is a board member of Tullett Prebon Plc, a leading brokerage firm that dominates the rates market and which is being asked to co-operate with FSA inquiries. He resigned his directorship in the days after the coalition was formed, but was reappointed in September 2010. He receives a quarterly fee of almost £7,000 for 20 hours' work.

George Osborne

In a statement to the Commons on Thursday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer described the Libor scandal as a "shocking indictment of the culture at banks like Barclays in the run-up to the financial crisis". But at the time that brokers were swilling Bollinger and fixing rates, Mr Osborne was trying to convince the City that he was not some callow newcomer but a chancellor in-waiting. In 2007, bruised by hostile briefings that he wasn't up to the job, he made strenuous efforts to court the City, through the Conservative City Circle. This week he condemned his opposite number, Ed Balls, for failing to regulate the banks, but in 2007 he backed a Tory policy report written by John Redwood which called for deregulation of the mortgage market.

Michael Spencer

Mr Spencer is a former treasurer of the Conservative Party. The 57-year-old, a close friend of David Cameron, is head of ICAP, a brokerage firm alleged to have helped manipulate bank interest rates while he was also Tory party treasurer from 2006 until October 2010. ICAP is being investigated by regulators over claims the Libor lending rates were rigged. He remains chairman of the Conservative Foundation, a body launched in 2009 for the party to receive legacies free of inheritance tax. He was among a list of party donors to have enjoyed "kitchen suppers" in the PM's Downing Street flat.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a major international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The Bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. Within a decade BCCI touched its peak. It operated in 78 countries, had over 400 branches, and had assets in excess of US$20 billion, making it the 7th largest private bank in the world by assets.

BCCI came under the scrutiny of numerous financial regulators and intelligence agencies in the 1980s due to concerns that it was poorly regulated. Subsequent investigations revealed that it was involved in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and illegally gained controlling interest in a major American bank. BCCI became the focus of a massive regulatory battle in 1991 and on July 5 of that year customs and bank regulators in seven countries raided and locked down records of its branch offices.

Investigators in the U.S. and the UK revealed that BCCI had been "set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs were extraordinarily complex. Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection."

The liquidators, Deloitte & Touche, filed a lawsuit against Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young – the bank's auditors – which was settled for $175 million in 1998. A further lawsuit against the ruling Sheikh of Abu Dhabi, a major shareholder, was launched in 1999 for approximately $400 million. BCCI creditors also instituted a $1 billion suit against the Bank of England as a regulatory body. After a nine-year struggle, due to the Bank's statutory immunity, the case went to trial in January 2004. However, in November 2005, Deloitte persuaded creditor Abu Dhabi to drop its claims against the Bank of England, except for a claim for return of its deposits, in that Abu Dhabi owned 77% of the bank shares at closing, and was therefore also facing a major lawsuit. To date liquidators have recovered about 75% of the creditors' lost money. A decade after its liquidation, its activities were still not completely understood.

Government minister Lord Green was at helm of "money laundering" bank HSBC
The Senate inquiry found lax HSBC controls let Mexican drug barons launder cash through the bank’s US operations
Daily Mirror
A Tory minister was at the helm of a bank accused today of allowing money laundering by drug cartels and potential terrorists.
HSBC shifted £4.5billion in suspicious funds from Mexico, where drug trafficking is rife, and billions more from countries such as Iran, Syria and Russia, a scathing US Senate report said.
Lord Green was HSBC group executive chairman at the time the shadowy transactions took place, before he was made Trade Minister by PM David Cameron.
The Senate inquiry found lax HSBC controls let Mexican drug barons launder cash through the bank’s US operations.
It also claimed the bank provided services to lenders in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh believed to have helped fund al-Qaeda and other terror groups.
Senator Carl Levin, leading a probe into £9.6billion in HSBC dealings from 2006 to 2010, said: “The culture at HSBC was pervasively polluted for a long time.
“In the age of international terrorism, drug violence in our streets and on our borders, and organised crime, stopping illicit money flows that support those atrocities is a national security imperative.”
Lord Green was executive chairman from 2006 to 2010, when he was made a life peer so he could join the Government. Previously, he was HSBC group chief executive from 2003.
HSBC’s head of group compliance David Bagley stepped down at the Senate hearing.
The report said HSBC ignored warnings from US authorities about doing business in countries such as Mexico.
Between 2007 and 2008, HSBC’s Mexican arm moved £4.5billion into the US operations, the report said.
It also said the bank moved money from Syria and Russia – and Iran in a possible violation of the US ban on transactions with the rogue state.
HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver admitted: “It is right that we will be held accountable and that we take responsibility for fixing what went wrong.”
Labour MP John Mann said Lord Green should not have been made a minister.
He declared: “Someone whose bank has been assisting drug cartels and corrupt regimes should not be in charge of a government portfolio.
"Once again, David Cameron’s judgement is suspect.”
Lord Green’s spokesman said: “We are waiting to see what HSBC is saying and will see if there’s anything we can add.”
Downing Street refused to comment on whether the PM knew of the laundering allegations before appointing him.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/city-news/hsbc-money-laundering-claims-g overnment-1146910_________________www.rethink911.orgwww.actorsandartistsfor911truth.orgwww.mediafor911truth.orgwww.pilotsfor911truth.orgwww.mp911truth.orgwww.ae911truth.orgwww.rl911truth.orgwww.stj911.orgwww.l911t.comwww.v911t.orgwww.thisweek.org.ukwww.abolishwar.org.ukwww.elementary.org.ukwww.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

Speaking on the Marr Show on BBC One on March 23rd, the former Daily Telegraph editor and historian Max Hastings said a “senior central banker” recently told him that London is now considered to be the “money-laundering capital of the world”.

Hastings was discussing the shooting of a Russian banker in London. The remark was all the more pertinent since Russia is now said to be controlled by a ‘gangster culture’ and because of the large number of Russian oligarchs and other business people who now live and work in the UK. A lot of these people carry criminal baggage, but the authorities seem entirely comfortable with the idea they should reinforce London’s position as the world’s “funny” money hub.

How did this state of affairs come about when, on paper at least, the UK has some of the strictest anti-money laundering legislation in the world?

The answer, I believe, lies in the fact that our many laws and regulations have never been effectively enforced by financial regulators, and banks and other financial institutions know they can get away with paying lip service to the rules.

Only this year has the Financial Services Authority managed to bring a money laundering charge against a UK-based financier, and he is a very small fish indeed. In an insider trading case against Richard Anthony Joseph, the FSA added two money laundering charges. It charged him with eight counts of insider dealing and two counts of money laundering.

The charges follow Joseph’s arrest in May 2010. The interest in the case is not in the insider dealing per se but in the addition of charges of money laundering. Although the FSA has had the power to prosecute this offence for some time, it has rarely, if ever, used it.

There is a world of difference between having rules which are meant to be obeyed, and doing everything within one’s power to avoid providing any meaningful form of compliance with the rules. The purpose of the regulations is to make it as difficult as possible for people who have acquired their money illicitly, anywhere in the world, to find a safe haven in the international banking system.

So there are rules and regulations which impose a burden on banks and financial institutions requiring them to ensure that before they accept money from a client, that they have a clear picture of its provenance, that they know as much as possible about their clients, their businesses, the sources of their funds, and if they have held high political office, to make sufficient enquiries to ensure that the monies being deposited are not in fact the proceeds of international aid payments which have been stolen from the country’s Treasury.

These rules are routinely flouted by the financial institutions.

They will say that they have large compliance departments, with many staff dedicated to ensuring that such situations do not arise, and in many senses, they are telling the truth. The problem is that they are not telling the whole truth. In 2011, The Financial Services Authority conducted an investigation into London banks and found that three-quarters of them were not doing enough to verify the sources of some customers’ wealth. The probe shed some light on a system that is failing to stop the flow of corrupt money, a problem that continues to have disastrous consequences for millions of people. Predictably, the regulator did not name the banks that had ignored the rules, nor gave any indication they would do so.

Predictably, the FSA also failed to take any public action against any of these institutions for this egregious flouting of the rules. They could have brought prosecutions against them for failing to implement the relevant regulations, but they did not do so. This is typical of the regulatory response to flagrant wrong-doing in our banking sector, and it is looked upon by the banks and their employees as a sign of immense weakness, which they feel able to exploit at every opportunity.

The compliance regime is undermined by the calibre and quality of people employed by the banks to implement the anti-money laundering regulations. Repeatedly, in discussions with recruitment consultants I am told that the kind of person being sought to fill a particular role is a ‘low-level’ employee with minimal length of service. They are looking for someone with a couple of years’ experience who might be capable of filling a new position, but they don’t want to pay any real money for anyone with any skills, real experience, or more importantly, the sense of independent knowledge to be able to stand up to the commercial people and say, ‘you can’t do that’!

You only have to look at the salary levels paid to compliance officers and then compare them to the salaries paid to traders and business getters, to see the huge discrepancies in functional importance the banks place on compliance. At a Group Compliance Director level, you may be seeing six figure salaries, but these are rare. The vast number of employees in this function are being paid peanuts compared to the business side of the organisation.

Another problem with the British mentality towards compliance is the over-emphasis on ‘process’ as compared with ‘effective enforcement’. The compliance function is awash with processes and procedures, they have manuals full of them, but all they are doing is seeking to demonstrate to any regulator that, if asked, they complied with the process.

But any process that is not rigorously tested and then analysed by a skilled and experienced person will be worthless. I once did a pre-Arrow review for a major global bank of their anti-money-laundering function. They had processes and procedures written down in manuals, provided at vast expense by the consultancy arm of one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms. When I tested how the staff were applying these processes, I found a huge lacuna in their areas of knowledge. To make matters worse, they had no-one with any ‘grey hair’ sitting in the middle of the web, holding all the ends of the processes, in order to ensure that they were being effectively implemented.

If we have a regulatory agency that repeatedly refuses to enforce the anti-money laundering regulations, and is sufficiently inept to accept that the level of compliance being provided by the banks and other financial institutions can be performed using a ‘tick box’ mentality, it provides a key part of the answer as to why London is now the money laundering capital of the world.

This is typical of the British attitude towards any kind of financial regulation. It is as if governments of whichever persuasion, have swallowed the canard that if they are seen to be heavy-handed towards the banks, then this will in some way deprive the UK of some hidden special advantage.

So, we have regulations which only get enforced at the margins, and which the major players ignore at whim. Yes, from time to time the regulators do seek to fine the banks for the worst examples of their egregious behaviour, but fining a bank is nothing more than an HP commitment as far as the bank is concerned. All it does is dilute their profitability, harming the shareholders not the executive perpetrators, which is reflected in even less tax being paid on their profits. If they are not named and shamed, as is routinely the case, then there is no reputational risk attached to the penalty either, and no stigma is applied.

As with so many other areas of financial wrong-doing, it seems the banks have seen off the regulators yet again, and the only loser would appear to be the UK financial services’ arena which is now, apparently, the venue of choice for every international crook’s dirty money. We must prepare ourselves to witness more Russian-style assassination attempts on our streets, as the organised criminals who deposit their money with the even better organised criminals in the banking sector, continue to see London as the money laundry of choice.

'The US government has been scheming on how to provide for continuity of government for many decades now. According to Peter Santilli, an informant who is an ex-marine and worked on portions of the contingency plans known as Rex 84, civil unrest will come after a financial collapse...'

'Should the situation warrant serious attention; crowd control methods would be implemented.

One possible scenario was the use of cluster bomb units (CBUs) that will emit upon detonation, a “sleep and kill” chemical weapon that will not disturb infrastructure, but is lethal to all living things within the effected zone. Santilli describes these particular 3 unit CBUs as shaped like water-heaters with a coned top and plunger-like device. Once deployed in the air, a parachute assists these CBUs to the targeted area. And when detonated, a deadly chemical gas will kill every human and animal in the specified cordoned area.

This is just one example, says Santilli, as to the lengths the US armed forces are trained to make sure continuity of government is preserved'

'In 1970, Henry Kissinger made a deal with the Saudi Arabian government that American debt would be purchased in exchange for cheap oil. Since then Iran has taken control over the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by their use of gold as currency which has threatened the direct value of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

This scenario with Iran coupled with the massive leaps forward in US military presence on American streets and the emergence of FEMA camps across the nation pose an obvious turn of events and explains exactly why we are witnessing the silent implementation of martial law.

The war with Iran has to do with gold, its use as currency and its exposure of the central banking cartel’s lack of gold which defines a fiat currency’s worth. And right now, the US dollar is absolutely worthless.

Meanwhile, back at the Olympics....(I wonder if the 'Flying Saucers' that arrive at the end of the Olympics will drop those CBU cluster bombs?)._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

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